Pictures and Problems from London Police Courts

The study of human nature is always interesting, but to study a criminal is an engrossing task. Anyone who undertakes this had better have no preconceived ideas; if he has he wi...

One hot afternoon in July, in the hottest year of recent times, a man of about thirty-five years of age sat on a chair outside a very poor house in a very mean street of Hackney...

Kate was an Irish girl, and there was no beauty about her. I met with her the first day I entered a London police court, and was afraid of her. I met with her many times afterwa...

‘The sight of this domestic misery completely appals me. I can hear no more.’ Mr. Biron had been listening at application time to a number of women who followed each other in qu...

Numbers of people seem to be possessed of a strange kind of mania that only manifests itself in action when they have taken a little drink. It may be, and it frequently is, a ve...

‘Please, sir, I want a summons.’ It was application time, and the speaker who stood in the witness-box was a boy of about twelve, evidently from a comfortable home. He wore a go...

It is commonly believed, and accepted as an article of faith among temperance workers, that there is much less hope of reforming a drunken woman than of reforming a drunken man....

But a great change came over London police courts about eleven years ago. The description I have given of one court held true of them all at that particular time. If my memory s...

‘You have missed your vocation in life; you ought to have been an actor, or a writer for the _Daily Telegraph_,’ so I was assured by an eminent professor of phrenology. The prof...

A strange being was Jane, or, rather, ‘Miss Cakebread,’ as she loved to call herself. Helpless, homeless, and penniless as she was, I question whether any lady other than the Qu...

a hundred directions improvement follows on the heels of improvement. For most men the hours of toil have been considerably lessened. Factory and workshop inspection has done wo...

That primitive life and manners simple, if not innocent, continue even now amongst us was brought startlingly to light in North London. A man, presumably young, stood in the doc...

It was one Monday morning in May that I first saw the inside of a London police court. It is fifteen years ago, but that day is still fresh in my memory; nay, rather, it is burn...